urn:taro:utexas.hrc.00152Prints Collection:An Inventory of the Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research
Center [Part 1]Helen Baer and Antonio AlfauUniversity of Texas at Austin2000Text converted and initial EAD tagging provided by Apex Data Services,
April 2001.Finding aid written in English.Thu Jul 24 11:27:12 CDT 2003urn:taro:utexas.hrc.00152 converted from EAD 1.0 to 2002 by v1to02.xsl
(20030505).
Descriptive Summary
Prints CollectionPrints Collection 1669-1906 (bulk 1775-1825)TXRC02-A154 document boxes, 7 oversize boxes
(33.38 linear feet)The collection consists of ca. 8,000 prints, the great
majority of which depict British and American theatrical performers in character or
in personal portraits.Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas
at AustinEnglish.
Scope and Contents

The Prints Collection, 1669-1906 (bulk 1775-1825), consists of ca. 8,000 prints, the
great majority of which depict British and American theatrical performers in
character or in personal portraits. The collection is organized in three series: I.
Individuals, 1669-1906 (58.25 boxes), II. Theatrical Prints, 1720-1891 (1.75 boxes),
and III. Works of Art and Miscellany, 1827-82 (1 box), each arranged alphabetically
by name or subject.

The prints found in this collection were made by numerous processes and include
lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, mezzotints, process prints, and line blocks; a
small number of prints are hand-tinted. A number of the prints were cut out from
books and periodicals such as

The Illustrated London News, The Universal Magazine, La belle assemblée, Bell's British Theatre, and The Theatrical Inquisitor; others comprised sets of plates of dramatic
figures such as those published by John Tallis and George Gebbie, or by the toy
theater publishers Orlando Hodgson and William West.

Most of the collection, located in Series I. Individuals, dates from the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and consists of prints of ca. 2,400
Britons and Americans, the majority of whom were associated with the theater.
Portrayed in busts, half- to full-length portraits, scenes from plays, or
caricatures are actors, playwrights and composers, dancers, theatrical managers,
popular performers, and concert artists. The series also includes, to a lesser
extent, poets and novelists, European royalty, members of the British peerage,
statesmen, religious and military leaders, and medical doctors. Those persons
represented by the greatest volume or variety of material are Frances Abington,
Elizabeth Billington, Maria Theresa Bland, Thomas Potter Cooke, John Emery, David
Garrick, Elizabeth Hartley, John Henderson, Joseph George Holman, Robert Keeley,
Frances Maria Kelly, Thomas King, Edward Knight, John Liston, Charles Mathews,
Isabella Mattocks, Anne Merry (née Brunton), John Palmer, William
Parsons, John Quick, Rachel, Sarah Siddons, William Smith, Anna Thillon, Ellen Tree
(Ellen Kean), James William Wallack (1795-1864), John Lester Wallack, James Pimbury
Wilkinson, Henry Woodward, and Eliza Wrixon-Becher. Among the most frequently
represented plays are

The Beaux' Stratagem, The Double Dealer, The Duenna, The Heir at Law, The Hypocrite, Love in a Village, The Road to Ruin, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, The Suspicious Husband, Venice Preserved, The Way of the World, and various works of
Shakespeare.

Series I is arranged alphabetically by the individual's name. Composite portraits and
unidentified persons are located at the end of the alphabet; individuals in
composites are cross-referenced. When known, the roles and works in which performers
are depicted are also given in the folder list.

The Theatrical Prints series, 1720-1891, contains ca. 100 prints which do not depict
a particular person but have a dramatic theme. About three quarters of these prints
depict scenes from plays in which the actors are not identified; many are idealized
representations of characters and settings. Works by Shakespeare are prevalent. The
remainder of this series consists of a small number of prints that do not relate to
any particular play but contain a theatrical element. The subject of these prints
ranges from wax museums to religious processions, with more material pertaining to
the commedia dell'arte than to any other topic; caricatures and stock characters are
also present. The prints are arranged alphabetically by title of play or subject;
for the plays, specific characters depicted are given in parentheses in the folder
list when known.

Series III. Works of Art and Miscellany, 1827-82, consists of ca. 60 landscapes,
romanticized or idealized scenes, and assorted images. Notable items are the
invertible pictures of faces in which a second face can be seen when the print is
viewed upside down. The series is arranged alphabetically by artist; untitled works
by unidentified artists are followed by miscellaneous material.

Prints can also be found in the Theater Biography Collection, Theater Buildings
Collection, and the Boydell Shakespeare Prints.

Note on the Folder List

Lillian Arvilla Hall's

Catalogue of Engraved Dramatic
Portraits in the Theatre Collection of the Harvard College Library
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932) is the source of many of the
attributions for roles and plays, as well as being the basis for the identification
of many of the performers. With few exceptions, the form of a person's name that
Hall used is the form employed in this inventory. When a performer's forename is
unknown, the title of address by which he or she was best known is often
substituted. Royalty and hereditary peers are listed under their Library of Congress
headings, which include dates of birth and death. For cross-references between
different forms of a name, particularly between a woman's maiden and married names,
researchers should consult Hall.

For reasons of brevity, the title of a play is not repeated if it exactly matches the
name of the character (e.g., Hamlet and Othello). Although the dates given in the
folder list most often reflect the year in which the items were published, they
sometimes indicate when the original painting (which the engraver copied) was
executed, or when the engraving was etched. Composites are housed in folders
26.47-28.80, 53.7-54.5, and oversize 59.6-9.

Abbreviations in the List:

comp---composite, composites

ob---oversize box

Access

Open for research

Processed by

Helen Baer and Antonio Alfau, 2000

Arrangement

The finding aid for the Prints Collection is a conflation of the original inventory
created in 2000, and of an addition that was catalogued in 2006. Currently the
addition is described only by a Folder List which has been appended to the original
inventory, using the series arrangement established within the original inventory
and continuing the box and folder numbering sequence. The Scope and Contents note
does not make reference to the addition, and the RLIN record for the collection
summarizes the original inventory only.

Due to size, the original inventory has been divided into three
separate units which can be accessed by clicking on the highlighted text
below:

The Prints Collection was assembled by Theater Arts staff, primarily from the
Messmore Kendall Collection which was acquired in 1958. Other sources were the
Robert Downing and Albert Davis collections.